Robust climate data is crucial for making decisions about climate risk and climate uncertainty. Dr. Jesse Keenan, Associate Professor of Real Estate, Tulane University, speaks with Robert Lutton, VP, Sandhill Consultants, about the different aspects of climate change data, the organizational approach to usage of climate data, and the consequent collateral impact.

Keenan breaks down the meaning of climate change data across different sectors. He takes into consideration the public and the private sectors, and says, “We’re all in the business of trying to understand the nature of climate change impact — perhaps those from which we have some scientific attribution and recognition of extreme events, which may be part of natural variability or may otherwise be connected to climate change.”

He adds that, in the gamut of impacts and phenomena, especially in connection to global financial framework and systematic risk, organizations have started rapid translation of measurement and empirical sciences to characterize decision making. This includes the allocation of resources while considering areas to invest or disinvest in, and managing the risk and uncertainties related to the allocation of resources.

Regarding his work goals, Keenan says, “Part of my work is developing not only the analytical technologies or products and services, but managing a broader landscape of technologies, intellectual property, and developing an ontological universe from which these various indistinct elements of data and information can transparently engage a wide range of stakeholders who need to make decisions about climate risk and climate uncertainty.”

He then sheds light on the different dimensions of climate change data, one of them being the public sets data analysis. Herein, the prime factors are global change modeling, understanding climate sensitivity, and determining the arc of carbon intensity fuelling climate change. This distinct range of data and model output from satellites are mostly produced by the government as big data, he adds, and are widely accessible as public data sets. 

Keenan goes on to explain the other dimension of climate change data where the focus lies on measurement and observation of data while analyzing the impact across sectors. “We have an ecosystem at work where there are our proprietary data sets about exposure and elements about impact pathways on one end of the equation. On the other end, there is civic data,” he adds. “There are citizen scientists and people who have created their Wiki universe of climate data and information. So, it’s a huge spectrum of public, private and civic participation.”

Speaking further on the coalition of data, he states that there has been significant development of climate services and data management as organizations are focused on deriving inter-organizational, intra-organizational, and external climate data information. 

However, Keenan states, the vastness of data, and the unavailability of a central mechanism and inter-operable formats have posed a challenge to achieving data quality. He affirms that although many big-tech firms are seeking a solution, it is still in the “Wild West.”

Delving deeper, he speaks on organizational usage of climate data from the production of services, business, and governance perspectives. He states that firms seek to launch products and services keeping in mind the market niche, environmental constraints on extraction commodities, and channelization of the price of goods. And, it is a well-articulated dimension that requires regular checks to ensure a competitive advantage.

The business viewpoint includes the impact associated with regular workforce operations, where the value lies in operations management. This, in turn, leads to the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) aspect of climate data usage in organizations. He notes the importance of activities like C-suite orientation in corporate governance to align enterprise and entrepreneurial operations.

In the governance context, Keenan addresses issues related to climate data usage and management in organizations. “Is our company in its management aligned with the Paris goals? Are we trying to reach carbon neutrality? Are we aligning our capital investments with the industry and where the industry is going? Do our shareholders demand that we have a fiduciary duty to understand the nature of these risks and uncertainties?”

Keenan further affirms that “Climate change impacts and shapes global capital.” He urges the industry to look at it by putting climate change with the other elements driving global change. Transitions in the extent of labor, resource allocation, global inequality, an aging society, and artificial intelligence are some of the factors fuelling global change, he says.

“Climate is one dimension that speaks to the rapidity of change and challenges the fundamental values of corporate management and risk management,” Keenan says.”  He further adds that the rapidity of change emerges as a challenge for organizations that find it hard to grasp the changing of events or contextualize phenomena. 

“The collateral impact is when you can understand the lag between the flows of climate data information, and you can internalize that into discrete or specialized types of decision making, it’s going to build an adaptive capacity to engage a lot of uncertainties that are non-climatic as well,” he explains.

With the intelligent infrastructure built as a consequence of the collateral impact, organizations will be able to collaborate on large-scale climatic and non-climatic phenomena, he continues. The smart framework will help organizations truly review the level of concern as well as the threshold for making decisions concerning actionable phenomena in corporate management.

Keenan says that managing sustainability and climate change activities help firms handle other non-climatic events. He believes it to be a challenge as well as an opportunity. "That’s something quite right for research, but I think it’s probably a reflection of a latent beneficial capacity to manage and engage with climate data. The upside is that you build a true intelligence capacity," he concludes.